Federal Employment Agency (BA) in Germany sets up a Continuous Delivery Platform for fast and continuous development of Hartz IV Accounting Software.

1. Capgemini is setting up a
Continuous Delivery Platform
together with the Federal
Employment Agency for a fast
and continuous development
of Hartz IV Accounting
Software.
Federal Employment Agency – Secured,
Fast, and Automated Software Development
The Situation
The Federal Employment Agency (BA) computes Hartz IV data sets of all service recipi-
ents in Germany with the help of ALLEGRO software. This process is compliant with
the complex regulations mentioned in “Sozialgesetzbuch II.” Updated versions
of the software are constantly updated to include the changes in rules.
Any error during updating and developing the software can not only damage the image
of BA but can also threaten the existence of many service recipients. In order to avoid
this, BA examines new software versions at each development stage (instead of examining
new versions at the end of a development cycle), identifies errors well in advance, and
rectifies them immediately. Since the development, test, and integration environment
of ALLEGRO consists of several hundreds of different systems, this target is achieved
only through the automation of the delivery process in different test environments.
In collaboration with

2. About Capgemini
With 180,000 people in over 40 countries,
Capgemini is one of the world’s foremost
providers of consulting, technology and
outsourcing services. The Group reported
2014 global revenues of EUR 10.573 billion.
Together with its clients, Capgemini creates
and delivers business, technology and digital
solutions that fit their needs, enabling them to
achieve innovation and competitiveness. A
deeply multicultural organization, Capgemini
has developed its own way of working, the
Collaborative Business ExperienceTM
, and
draws on Rightshore®
, its worldwide delivery
model.
Learn more about us at
www.capgemini.com
Rightshore® is a trademark belonging to Capgemini
the way we do itPublic Sector
The information contained in this document is proprietary. Copyright ©2016 Capgemini. All rights reserved.
About BA
The Federal Employment Agency (BA)
provides comprehensive employment and
training services for citizens and organizations
in the labor market. A nationwide network
of employment agencies and offices enable
The Agency to deliver its services. The BA’s
main responsibilities are facilitating training
and recruitment, providing career advice
and guidance to employers, developing
vocational training, supporting professional
development and integration of people with
disabilities, working to preserve and create
jobs, and providing social security benefits
including unemployment insurance and
insolvency funds.
In addition to this the Federal Employment
Agency undertakes labor market and employ-
ment research, labor market monitoring and
reporting, and produces employment
statistics. It also pays child benefit to families,
and has regulatory powers to combat fraud.
More information is available at
www.arbeitsagentur.de
In collaboration with
For more information on this project, please contact:
success.story@capgemini.com
The Solution
Capgemini has set up a Continuous Delivery Platform together with BA on the basis of
well-established and very reliable open-source products. The platform automates the
delivery process of the new software in various environments and reduces the testing
effort and errors.
The Result
The Continuous Delivery Platform ensures that the development and testing environments
are updated automatically and continually with more than 10,000 updates in the delivery
cycle of around four months. This reduces lead time and accelerates software development.
New software versions are set up for implementation in the shortest time and are delivered
later when required. The risks of implementation have been reduced significantly through
the high level of automation, the large number of software implementations, and the
experience gained through it.
Due to the size and complexity of the system and also due to the high need for
coordination with other areas, Capgemini established an Agile collaboration approach for
the development of ALLEGRO. Continuous Delivery is an important building block of this
method, which utilizes closely synchronized development across several areas. The
Continuous Delivery Platform ensures that the infrastructure of BA can be operated
with a version of ALLEGRO, not only during the development process, but also after that,
in an efficient, simple, and secure manner. In this way, the development, test, and rollout
teams can regularly obtain feedback from the technical departments. This helps improve
the quality of the product and satisfaction of the technical departments and the configuration
options are expanded. There are no license costs as an open-source solution is used
and the development is ensured due to a large number of end-users and developers.
How BA and Capgemini Worked Together
BA and Capgemini started working together since 2009 for the development of ALLEGRO.
The core team of ALLEGRO consists of four groups, which are responsible for the tech-
nical conception, development, tests, and rollout, respectively. These groups comprise
employees of BA as well as Capgemini.
“The Federal Employment Agency has successfully implemented a huge and complex
system (Unikat) in collaboration with Capgemini. ALLEGRO is a core system, which more
than 300 jobcenters work with. It was crucial that the system develops in releases right
from the beginning and also that it could be implemented at a later point of time. In this
way, the operations and initial development could be managed parallely for 18 months.
A further factor for success was the transparent collaboration between the technical side
and Java development. Employees with varied qualifications and experience and, also to a
certain extent, with very different organizational cultures had to work together smoothly and
in a very target-oriented manner. On the one hand, this was possible as employees on
both sides could identify themselves with the tasks and project targets.
Also on the other hand it would have been impossible without the personal efforts and
cooperation of all those involved. The result speaks for itself: high satisfaction level and
an absolute value-add in the day-to-day work of more than 35,000 users” says Ulrich
Völkoi, Divisional Head ITP1 - IT strategy, and Project Head, ALLEGRO.